Freddi smiled. ‘Around here it is. Besides, their military guy already has a nickname and it’s the same as the one we had for him in Kuta.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, they call him Gorilla. He walks like an ape, you remember the guy?’
Mac nodded as he remembered ducking down in Ari’s car outside the Puri. The last thing he’d seen was that helmet hair on a big wide man with a big wide gait.
‘We’re trying to get a name on him, but we think he’s Hassan’s tough guy. Former Pakistani special forces, something like that.’
Mac thought about it. ‘Any other airfi elds they might use? A Plan B?’
Freddi shook his head, smiled. ‘This is Sumatra, McQueen – we got old airfi elds like we got trees.’
A black LandCruiser was waiting at the airport when they landed and Purni took the wheel. They left Medan behind and swept inland at a hundred and fi fty K an hour, locals pulling off on to the shoulder of the narrow roads as the Cruiser approached.
Freddi sat in the front with a police radio and Mac sat in the rear, his Oakley pack beside him. He hoped there was a spare assault rifl e in the weapons bags stowed behind him. The thought of a shoot-out with Gorilla’s boys, armed only with the Heckler, was not comforting.
The terrain undulated through lots of green, the heat and the haze giving the country a haunted feel. The radio crackled constantly and Freddi spoke into it while looking at a plastic-covered map on his lap. Occasionally he’d make an entry in a small detective’s notebook, turning around sometimes to confi rm a landmark called from a helo team. Mac didn’t know how you’d fi nd a landmark in that country with its miles of green scrub, palm-oil plantations, market gardens and small farms, punctuated by stands of jungle that looked like they’d been allowed to remain around the creeks and rivers.
A Huey painted in army camo colours buzzed the Cruiser and Freddi looked up through the sunroof at the ID numbers, then yelled something into the radio. The excitement almost reached screaming levels from the radio speakers as Freddi tapped Purni on the left arm and pointed, then tapped him again, Mac’s adrenaline squirting as they screeched into a four-wheel hand-brake stop.
Purni brought the revs up again and gunned the Cruiser into a hard-right turn as they aimed into an impossibly narrow jungle track and fl ew into it like a train into a tunnel. In seconds the bright light of the open Sumatran country was replaced with a darker, dappled drive down a trail close enough for the trees to brush and bang the sides of the Cruiser. Mac reached for his seatbelt as he looked over Purni’s shoulder and saw the speedo nudge one-seventy, the spring-mounted aerials whiplashing around the vehicle.
They screamed through the tunnel of green at breakneck speed, Mac suddenly feeling very seasick. Without warning they were travelling uphill, Purni struggling to keep the Cruiser on the track as it bucked and whined against the rough ground, the overworked engine screaming every time all four wheels got airborne. As the terrain got even steeper Mac grabbed the handrail in the ceiling and heard himself say, Oh shit, as the Cruiser hit the crest of the blind rise at one sixty-fi ve and leapt into the air.
They sailed for four seconds and when they descended they had run out of track and the LandCruiser was about ten metres into the jungle. Mac yelled as they bounced, small trees falling like bowling pins and thumping the undercarriage of the vehicle as Purni kept his foot on the gas. Then – as they hit a stump large enough to upend most vehicles – they were dropping nose down into a small river.
Mac leaned back and prayed as the LandCruiser buried its grille into the shallow water at such a speed that water and mud rose over the vehicle like a wave. Purni kept the revs going as the Cruiser, barely losing momentum, lurched across the twenty-metre-wide creek, muddy water pouring across the bonnet. Grabbing onto the gentler slope of the opposite bank, Purni slowly got enough purchase to start bowling trees again. Mac put his feet up on the back of Freddi’s seat as the engine screamed in pain. They got their speed up again so that the thumpa-thumpa of the jungle under and above the vehicle quickly reached a drum-like rhythm. With one fi nal lurch they were out of the jungle and back onto the track, bouncing up and down like a ball.
Sweat poured off Mac’s forehead. He’d seen lots of bad driving in his life, mostly teenagers in Rockie who’d save every penny for their fi rst ute and then see whether the rear tyres or the clutch-plate would burn out fi rst if you took it to seven grand and dropped the clutch.
But Purni was a whole new league. He was sober, for starters.
Purni gunned the accelerator again and the souped V8 screamed into line and raised a cloud of dust as the Cruiser’s speedo climbed back into three digits. Freddi worked the radio and then looked back.
‘Almost there, McQueen. Need some vests.’
The incoming radio was a choir of adrenaline and screaming. Then they all heard the unmistakable pop of automatic weapons bursting out of the radio’s speaker. Mac swivelled around and pulled two blue Kevlar vests from the rear compartment, passed them forward, then grabbed one for himself, fastening it across his overalls. Freddi asked for weapons and Mac passed him two M4s and a pistol-grip pumpy that Freddi wanted.
They had a spare M4 and Mac grabbed it, glad for the fi repower.
Freddi took a fi nal call and told Purni to pull over. They found a small natural culvert and Purni reversed the Cruiser into it. They were gasping fast and shallow as Freddi and Mac kicked their doors to get them open against the undergrowth.
They stood at the front of the Cruiser and, as the big V8 dinked, Freddi gave them the drum. Two carloads of bad guys had broken through and were heading their way, all heavily armed. The Kopassus helo had a fi re in the tail-rotor and the other BAIS operators who’d been giving chase in their LandCruiser had had to stand off given the numerical disadvantage. Another helo was hours away so it was down to Freddi, Mac and Purni.
Purni and Mac stayed on the side of the track where the Cruiser was hidden while Freddi crossed to the other side, stealthing forward and listening, his dark combat fatigue pants blending in with his HiTecs and vest. He had an M4 rifl e on one arm and the matt-black pumpy on the other. Mac noticed he didn’t take his sunnies off as he established his hide in the bushes.
‘Three on one, okay? And don’t go past your three o’clock,’ said Freddi.
Meaning: all three weapons on each vehicle as it came through, and don’t shoot directly across the road.
Eight seconds later, the fi rst sounds of a vehicle rose over the birds and monkeys. There was a faint scream and a thud and the wailing sounds of a 4x4 being driven hard.
‘Let’s go to work,’ said Freddi.
Mac checked for safety and load for the third time since he’d got out of the Cruiser. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he got into his hide and took a standing marksman stance, shouldered the M4 and made a brief ranging scan of the road and his expected fi eld of fi re. He visualised the whole thing, saw the target, then the narrow reaction window and saw himself fi ring with total steadiness.
Purni took a kneeling marksman pose fi fteen metres further down the road.
The mechanical screams got louder and suddenly there was a white Ford pick-up truck powering towards them, doing at least one-thirty klicks. Mac aimed up and as the Ford came into his pre-set range he squeezed on the trigger, letting a blaze of full-auto go at the windscreen of the F350 crew cab.
The Ford’s windscreen fell apart as the air fi lled with lead from both sides of the road. A shooter leaning over the Ford’s crew cab fi red at Freddi. As the truck passed Mac, he saw shooters in the well side, one over the cab and the other leaning on the rear rollbar. Mac ducked back into the culvert as the rear shooter let loose, shots fi ring through the trees above him. But the damage was done and the F350 was sliding off the track like a train derailing. There was a loud crash and the sound of rending steel and breaking trees as the Ford – obviously with a dead- man’s foot – kept the revs up deep into the jungle.
Mac got up and checked Purni and Freddi. They were both okay.
Freddi held his hand up to say no to chasing the shot-up Ford. Mac’s heart pounded in his temples as the sound of another vehicle got louder and they settled back in their hides. It came into view and they let their rifl es drop as they saw the other BAIS LandCruiser.
Freddi stood, put a hand up, and the black Cruiser locked up and slid for sixty metres.
‘We’re missing one truck,’ said Freddi.
Mac and Purni joined him in the middle of the track, checking their rifl es and peering ahead to see if there was another vehicle coming. The Cruiser’s white reversing lights came on and whoever was driving it gave it full revs as it backed up to the three of them and slid to a halt. Freddi jogged to the front passenger door and had a
